Paulo Coelho Wants You to Pirate Everything He’s Ever Written

As fans of Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho likely know, the best-selling author has been a longtime supporter of the illegal downloading of his work. Now, he’s joining forces with The Pirate Bay, calling himself “The Pirate Coelho,” and asking readers to download everything that he has ever written from the file-sharing site. But don’t assume his motives are altruistic.

“The more often we hear a song on the radio, the keener we are to buy the CD,” Coelho has explained. “It’s the same with literature. The more people ‘pirate’ a book, the better. If they like the beginning, they’ll buy the whole book the next day, because there’s nothing more tiring than reading long screeds of text on a computer screen.”

What do you make of his logic? Do you think he’d feel differently about giving his work away for free if he hadn’t already sold more than 100 million copies of his books worldwide? [via The Guardian]